Whether you want the portability of a laptop or the versatility of a desktop
computer, the Eblaster
can do both of those things. This is one of the coolest ways I've seen someone
create a little like all-in-one system, except it's modular in the sense that
it's just a case. Plus, can your laptop
do this?
It's pretty sweet. The signature trick that the E blaster
can do with the legs is super cool and it's actually a big reason why we even
did the LTT video a few years ago. I was the writer for that. You know, I've kind
of built in this thing uh once or twice before. And I just think it's super
cool. There aren't a ton of differences between that video and then the full
release except for this guy here, which
the community has apparently dubbed the Linus hole because we made comments
about how like, oh yeah, it's sick that you can fit a graphics card in here and
sure there's tons of ventilation here, but what about, you know, a pass through card? Now you've got holes on both sides
for some nice air flow. The only other thing that came in our box is this
actually pretty big set of manuals. Let
me see if they're just different languages. E Blaster product and safety
warnings and instructions. This is in German. This is also in German. So,
you've got two things here. Products and safety warnings, and then your little manual. At the heart of EB Blaster lies
a trinity of core values: performance, upgradability, and portability. One
thing that you're going to want to take a look at is their little build diagram here. Uh cuz it's going to tell you
exactly where all of your components go. With small form factor builds, they're
usually pretty standard, but there's always a little bit of devian with each one because, you know, maybe it's a
sandwich style, maybe it's tower style, maybe it's something like this where
it's all just kind of like a really big uh vertical space kind of like the
fractal ridge that we actually use for our little like B-roll machine. Let's
put the legs away.
Now, with the rest of our package, we've also got a few parts in here. here. Looks like uh maybe a riser cable, uh
some screws or bolts, as well as uh I'm
actually not sure what that is. Maybe a USB extension or something. We'll find
out once we open it up. But I just wanted to talk quickly about the
aluminum frame um with the I think molded plastic for parts for the legs.
Overall, it's like pretty sturdy and I'm actually pretty confident about fitting
parts in here and then taking it with you somewhere because like nothing's
really going to happen. at least nothing that wouldn't happen if you were carrying a case that got destroyed in
some other way. We've also got though on the front here not only our power button
which is going to be right below our monitor which is great. Um but this is a
vase mount for a monitor. So once you're done eventually this whole unit has a
display on the front and it's got a computer in the back and you can just
take the whole thing to a land party. Pop down the legs and you're ready to
go. And then we're going to plug everything into this little control
board back here that's got our IO, it's got networking, it's got power, um mic
and headphone jack. Pretty much everything you're going to need at a LAN. One thing that actually kind of
took me quite a while to figure out the first time I had this thing here was how
to open the damn thing. Uh it's it turns out it's pretty easy. You just
pull these over and then pop the whole thing off. Uh now you've got access to
the rest of it. Yeah.
And then you should be able to just Yep.
take that off. Wow. And so now it's all
open and it's actually like super easy to build in. Okay. So, what else do we
get? This is a DisplayPort extension. Flat DP mailto-male 4K. Yes, it is male
to mail. We have our riser cable. Yeah, this is just a hardware bag with some
screws and stuff. So, we're going to build a computer in this thing, believe it or not. But not before I talk to you
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Check it out today using our link in the video description. Okay, so we've got a
bunch of cables here all bundled up. I'm
guessing is all of our IO extensions, power supply, all that sort of stuff.
We've got Ethernet here, power cable, another power cable. Yeah, because this
one's probably for our monitor actually, but we'll figure that all out in a bit.
And then we've got just your standard kind of IO connections for USB, front
panel, uh, another USB, and power. I'm
going to move all these cables out of the way just so that we, you know, keep
our build experience nice and simple. And then I'm going to look at our
diagram so I can remember where everything goes. Graphics card goes here. I know that much. I don't really
know what parts I were selected for me today. I just requested small form
factor. Looks like we've got some TForce
memory, 16 gigs, 6400 mega transfers per
second, so 32 gigs of RAM, DDR5. Pretty
good speeds, too. That's not bad. Then we've also got our What is this? 9600X
reasonable gaming CPU.
As for our cooler, we went with Noctua.
This is the lowprofile cooler. And what is this guy? This is another lowrofile
cooler. Why do I have two coolers, Bel? >> Uh, that's Jamie's fault, I guess.
>> Jamie, before I put her cooler on, I want to install our SSD cuz that's going
to get in the way of anything over here. So, I'm just going to unscrew this.
Now, we're going to pop our cooler down. NHL9i
AM5 specifically from Noctua. Uh, this
is a great little cooler. I've used them for other small form factor builds.
While this is a great little cooler, it's not going to do a whole lot for
much more power hungry chips. If you can fit like even a 240 mm AIO in your ITX
system, maybe not. But if you can, I'd recommend going that route instead cuz
it's still super low profile. And then you can maybe mount the radiator somewhere else. Maybe even outside the
case if you get a little creative. I don't know how good that would look. Probably not very, but you know, it's an
option here. I got to press more. We've
got our board pretty much ready to go. I've just got to attach the PCIe riser
card to it. Um, but this is going to go
like this somehow. I'm going to follow the diagram and then our graphics card
will go here and then our power supply go will go here. So, let's get the PSU
ready. SP750 from Leon Lee. This thing
is great and it should be big enough. This will take both SFX and I think um
SFXL or whatever this slightly bigger version of SFX is. And yeah, it kind of
looks like it looks like there's lots of room here. Actually,
one thing you might want to avoid, unlike me, I tried screwing in the wrong
screws into the standoffs. Uh because attached to our standoffs were the
mounting screws for our motherboard. So, make sure to just unscrew those really
quick and then use them to mount your board. I wasted way too much time trying
to screw down uh into literally nothing.
Some of you might be saying to yourselves, "Plof, that graphics card is
tiny. What are you doing?" To that I say, I didn't pick this graphics card.
But you know what? Because of the eblasters uh very generous space, you
don't have to pick a little lowprofile 4060. Anything up to, I think, 330 mm
will fit in this guy, aka 33 cm. Glenn
is back. Glenn is back.
One quick problem. Uh, you might want to make sure your power supply is oriented
the right way before screwing it down because I got to flip it over now to
plug in my power extension.
All right, we've got everything wired up. graphics card. Definitely too small.
But I've got our case power going into our power supply that routes out back to
here to this little I don't know what that is actually. Electrical hazard
danger. Uh be careful with that. But basically that's a little power splitter
that's going to uh go out to the wall. And then this extra one is I'm presuming
for our monitor. Hopefully your monitor takes a C13 power cable. If not, you're
going to have to run it into its own power source. But let's do the moment of
truth here. Front powers on the front.
Wow, it works. Now that I know it works, I'm
going to power it all off and slap it all together. Would you look at that?
It's ready to go. One thing you're going to notice is that the monitor's on.
Well, let me tell you, you're supposed to do that first. So, when you see me
building it earlier in the video, yeah, don't do it that way cuz you're going to
have to take it all apart and then put the monitor on after. Um, but if you
follow the instruction guide like you should, then you end up with something
like this, where your system is just ready to go. You've got your computer in
the back, you've got your monitor in the front, and then you've got the legs that
can extend and go up.
There we go. It's a little tricky. I'm also doing it backwards, though. You're
supposed to do it on the monitor side. My one issue with having the thumb
catches for the legs on this side is while it's unlikely that you're going to
like hold it right up to your chest when you go to
let the legs down. There's a very small chance that you would do that and you
have a zipper on you and you could scratch your monitor. I doubt that's
going to happen. It's a really minor thing, but just be careful if you're
ever undoing the legs uh with the monitor that doesn't have any kind of
like screen protector on it. Other than that though, I mean, don't get me wrong,
we could have put a bigger graphics card on here, and our monitor is technically
a little big. It's supposed to be more like 24 inches. I think we've got a 25
here, but this thing's awesome.
The leg mechanism isn't perfect. Could use maybe a little bit of adjustment. I
don't know if ours is just a little worn out from having done it so many times, but the reality is if you're taking this
to lands, you're going to be putting the legs down and putting them back up again
at least, I don't know, a few times a year. So, it's a mechanism you want to
feel good. Um, my other recommendation is when you're picking your monitor, we
did put some spacers on this one. Um, but even without those spacers, it's
still coming out a little bit, so it's kind of big. Now, I don't know how well
that's going to fit into a bag. Ultimately, I don't think the eBlaster
is for me personally. I don't go to a lot of lands, and even when I do, I have
a like compact case that's small enough for me to carry. I got a car. I don't
mind lugging around some extra stuff. But there are some major advantages to
having something like this over something like this. You've still got a
screen attached, but now instead of having a mobile version of an RTX 4080,
you can throw a full fat guy in here. There are other advantages like how hot
and loud a gaming laptop can be when you're really pushing it. Whereas this
guy, like there's so much space and cooling back here that even with a big
beefy card and a reasonably beefy CPU,
it's going to stay cool and quiet enough depending on what kind of fans you've
got on it. So, you're not going to be that person that uh busts out the laptop
and I was like,
I can't believe I only just thought about this now when I'm reviewing the
video. But with the eblaster, if your monitor breaks or a new model comes out
later, you can replace that unlike a laptop.
That's the fans creeping up as it uh tries to stay cool under load, which
it's never going to do. And the other reality is you're going to have to buy a
case anyway. And these days, most decent cases are going to be like at least
$100. This one is a lot more expensive admittedly, but it's also coming with
stuff that costs more like a PCIe riser as well as all of the custom
manufacturing that's gone into this guy um for a very custom design that is used
for a very specific purpose. At around $420, I think it's expensive, but it's
also pretty reasonable considering it's, you know, handcrafted and they've done a
lot of design iteration and it's for a very specific niche use case. Now, would
I recommend it? I think if you're going to a lot of lands and you need something
that is beefier than this and you don't want to carry around like a full desktop
plus monitor, and I think it can work great for the very specific people out
there who want this very specific design. As for me, I'm probably not
going to buy one. I don't go to enough lands. I just if I do go to a LAN, I you
know, whatever. I'll just bring my computer and my monitor. That's good enough for me. But hey, if you like this
case, maybe check out another case video. Adam tends to do all of her small
form factor stuff. I only did this guy cuz I did the original e blaster video.
I'm PLO. This is ShortCircuit. If you want to check out any others, uh, check
out the Terra, the Fractal Terra. That's a good option if you want to go to a LAN
and you want to also carry a monitor with